Thursday, April 9, 2009

The Best Meal: w/ Bigfoot Barleywine

Okay. This meal is amazing. Allow me to describe it in detail.

The food is as follows: a Buffalo Veggie Dog from Spike's. Check it out: a buttery toasted bun caressing a veggie dog cooked to perfection. This is topped with buffalo sauce, blue cheese, and a pile of scallions. It is awesome. It comes with "poodle fries" which are nice and curly.

To drink I got to try a Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Ale. I had a barleywine once, at the Portsmouth Brewery. That one had a strong plumb taste and I was not too into it. Barleywines are sweet-ish ales with high alcohol content. American barleywines are more hoppy than English ones. And the Sierra Nevada is no exception.

It's a pretty ruby red with a tiny off-white head that quickly disappears into a small ring. It smells strongs of hops, a little citrus. The taste is very hoppy and bitter at first, but then warms up. It quickly turns sweeter with fruits and caramel and is overall well balanced between bitter and sweet. The mouthfeel is interesting. It's soft! At first I feel like I'm eating a pillow, and then I realize that might be what "chewy" is. I often read beer reviews that describe mouthfeels as chewy which I've never understood. I even ask on Beer Advocate and actually get a variety of responses, some saying that if it's thick, it's chewy, others saying that it's more about it feeling sticky. Whatever it is, the Bigfoot is awesome. Towards the end when it's warm I feel like I'm eating caramel candy. I REALLY enjoy this beverage. It took over an hour to drink and has 9.6%abv but I feel like I could have, and enjoy, another one, if I had one.

About Me

I've always enjoyed a beverage or two. But beer is something I have never really understood. Oh, I have drunk it. And I have enjoyed it. But to understand it...that is something else all together. See my "intro" entry from 10/17/08 for details.